PAXTON, Mass. – A chorus of encouraging shouts rained on Morgan Lucas as she placed her right foot in the batter’s box. “Come on two-three!” her teammate shouted, referring to the number on the back of her Worcester Strike Zone jersey. “Let’s go, Morgan!” 

It was the bottom of the second with nobody out. Runners were on first and second, and Morgan’s team trailed by a 4-3 score during a recent weekend AAU Baseball Tournament. The 13-year-old middle schooler cradled the barrel of the bat and stared toward her team’s dugout along the first base line. The signal was to bunt. She knew her job was to move both runners into scoring position. She then placed her left foot into the box and held her bat up indicating to the pitcher she was ready.

Morgan, the only girl on the team, took the first pitch high for a ball. 

“Good eye, 2-3!” shouted someone from the dugout.

She knew that was not a good pitch to bunt. Next pitch was right down the middle. She lowered her bat over the plate. She lunged and tapped the pitch. The ball gently rolled on the infield. After she recoiled the bat, she tossed it to the ground and sprinted to first base as fast as she could.

“Come on, Morgan, hustle!”

The throw beat her by a step, but she did her job. It was a perfect sacrifice bunt. She gave the first base coach, Greg Lebel, a high-five and shouts from the dugout screamed, “There you go, 2-3! There you go, Morgan!” The next batter lined a base hit to right field, scoring both runners. Her team was ahead and she made a major contribution in helping them get the lead. Her team went on to win a doubleheader in the tournament to move on to the finals.

“She’s not the fastest kid out there,” said Jeremy Lucas, her father and assistant coach. “But she works hard and she knows how to play the game.” 

“She’s a competitor,” said Lebel, who is also the head coach of the Strike Zone baseball team. “That’s what I love about her. She’s a competitor. She plays the game right.”

Morgan should know how to play the game; she has been involved in it since she was four-years-old.

“Ever since I was a baby, my brother has been throwing me the ball,” she said. “I’ve loved this game since.”

Photo by Kevin Paul Saleeba.

At a time when most girls are switching from baseball to softball, or switching sports entirely, Morgan has no plans of giving up baseball anytime soon.

“I pitched a softball a little, but it was different,” she said about her attempt to throw a larger ball underhanded. “I didn’t really like it. You are too close. It was just different.”

Lucas has been throwing the ball overhanded as long as she can remember. She credits playing in the backyard with her older brother, Jacob, as the reason she loves baseball.

“He taught me how to throw,” said Morgan, who will be entering eighth grade at Rutland’s Central Tree Middle School in the fall. “We always play catch when we want to and we usually hit together. He’s like a role model to me. He taught me how to throw a ball and how to field. I owe it to him.”

Her brother loves watching his sister follow in his footsteps. “I think it’s very cool and impressive that she is playing baseball,” said Jacob, 18, who played varsity baseball at Wachusett Regional High School in Rutland. “At her age the boys are getting bigger and stronger and she is still competing with them. Morgan puts in a lot of work.

“Knowing that I am her role model makes me feel proud,” he said. “Ever since she was born, I wanted to be her role model and a good big brother and her saying I’m her role model makes me feel very proud.”

Having the support of her family has helped her ignore the outside noise against her playing baseball.

“Everybody is telling her, ‘Softball, softball, softball,’ but she still competes with the boys,” her dad said. “There’s a pull by the softball community, in general, because she is a girl and girls play softball, but that’s a different sport.”  

She may be the only girl, but she has been more than accepted by her teammates.

“She’s been playing with most of these guys [on her team] here since she was nine,” her dad said. “She doesn’t know any better. These guys treat her like she is one of them, because she is one of them. They’re hard on her at times and she’s hard on them at times. She fits right in.”

Lebel said she is respected by her teammates because of her work ethic and competitiveness.

“It’s her competition level that we look for in our players, and she has it,” he said. “It’s a good trait to build any team with.”

Her biggest strength as a ball player is on the pitcher’s mound. She throws four different pitches; a fastball, a curve, a changeup and a slider. In her last game as a member of the Rutland Little League last summer, she pitched the decisive game to help lead Rutland to their first District 4 Championship in 15 years. In that game, she tossed six-and-a-third innings of two hit baseball, striking out eleven and giving up zero runs. Her curve is her out pitch.

“It’s slower than most pitches,” she said. “And it kind of throws them off sometimes and they miss it.”

She is very comfortable on the mound.

“When she’s pitching,” her dad said. “The boys [on the opposing team] give a giggle at first and then she throws a few pitches ,and they’re like, ‘wow!’ She’s got a little pop. She’s probably the second hardest thrower on the team.”

Photo by Kevin Paul Saleeba.

She also plays several other positions including first, second and third base. She plays a little outfield, as well as catch. On days when she is the designated hitter, she will go behind the plate to help warm up the pitcher between innings or she will throw warm-up tosses to the other fielders.

However, out of all the things she is capable of doing on the field, Morgan loves to pitch most.

“I love it. I just kind of like being in control.”

She says there is nothing better than getting hitters to swing at her curve, but she does not always look for the strike out.

“I’ve been throwing the curve for about two years,” she said. “I’m just trying to throw strikes and if they hit it, the fielders will field it and I know they will make the throws and we will win.”

“She competes,” said dad. “She’s got that edge about her. She’s tough as nails and nothing seems to bother her.”

She was also recruited to play for the Boston Slammers, an all-girls baseball team. She recently traveled with the Slammers to Maryland for a tournament on July 17 and 18. During the tournament, she pitched and played catcher, first, second and third base. The tournament had about 600 female baseball players from all over the world including teams from South Korea and Taiwan. 

Prior to the tournament, Morgan was scouted by the all-girls Boston team.

“The Boston Slammers came out to watch her one day,” her dad said. “They saw her pitch a few innings. She was three-up and three down. They liked what they saw, so they offered her a spot.”

Morgan certainly made a strong impression on them, according to Boston Slammers head coach Miguel Rivera.

“I had the privilege to attend a game of Morgan’s and watched her in person while playing for her AAU travel team,” Rivera said. “I saw her pitch versus an all-boy travel team and was impressed with the confidence she had with her pitches. However, the umpire didn’t seem too friendly with the strike zone for her. She was squeezed on what I thought were some great pitches and locations. She was not phased on the pitching rubber. She worked back and used her curveball to get back in the counts.”

As she continues to play baseball, she looks forward to the chance of becoming the first girl baseball player for both her middle and high school baseball teams. Until then, as she follows her dream, Morgan hopes to be a positive role model, much like her brother was to her, for other girls who want to play baseball. 

“It feels pretty cool to show them that you can keep on playing baseball,” she said with a smile. “If you really want to and if you just stick with it, you can do it, too.”